4. Likeliness of application and tool fit (implementation fitness) is assured when the tool is “explicitly designed to conduct research on […] the policy process” in
2.1 R efLexive s tandpoint a ppRoach
2.2.2 Multilevel Governance and Comparability
2.2.2.2 Travelling Instruments of Equality Governance
The transnational policy diffusion135 of public service “innovation”136 such as gender mainstreaming137 and the “diffusion”138 or “transfer”139 of its implementation tools, among them gendered forms of policy analysis, makes them travelling instruments of equality governance. The notion of travelling is borrowed from
“travelling concepts,” originally referring to intra- or inter-disciplinary conceptual transfers.140 Translating concepts into other contexts initiates a journey through space and time.141 A comparative approach is an attempt to assess the dispersion and interrelatedness of policy innovations such as gender mainstreaming and its travelling tools, in their in-depth application on the ground, in order to control for
“innovative equality policy outcomes.”142
Both Canada and the EU are seen as beacons for the advancement of gender mainstreaming.143 Gender mainstreaming is an international strategy, and its instruments, such as GIA and GBA, attempt identical things: To mainstream gender equality into policy and programme analysis and programme making. Although the implementation of gender mainstreaming and its instruments depends on local contexts, political traditions and systems, it lends itself to comparative research due to its initial, world-wide common origin in the document Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Women in 1995.144 As such, this research can be seen as a comparative inquiry into the travelling strategy of gender mainstreaming and its instruments.145
Gender analysis tools are developed and implemented as innovations in yet another innovative environment of IA.146 The regulatory frameworks for and practices of IA or policy analysis are diverse,147 and gender analysis tools have also diversified,
135 | For an account on the policy diffusion of gender mainstreaming, see (True/Mintrom 2001).
136 | “Innovation” is understood as emergent or planned “newness” or a process of
“discontinuous change” in public service research. Within the typology of innovation, gender mainstreaming would best be described as a form of “incremental innovation,” as a
“discontinuous change” under existing bureaucratic paradigms, but “affecting organisational skills and competencies” (Osborne/Brown 2013, 3-5). Whether it is justified to still speak of gender mainstreaming as an “innovation” in the public sector, almost 20 years after its introduction, depends on its sectoral uptake.
137 | Schmidt 2005; Müller 2007.
138 | Hartly 2013, 54-56.
139 | Operating according to uptake processes comparable to policy transfer (Lütz 2007, 132).
140 | Bal 2002.
141 | Lammert 2010.
142 | Lewalter 2011.
143 | Hakesworth 2012, 236; 241-245.
144 | UN 1995.
145 | Travelling is usually an enriching experience, but transposing concepts also poses risks due to semantic and epistemological shifts (Baumbach et al. 2012).
146 | De Francesco et al. 2012.
147 | As laid out in chapter 1.4.
which calls for a comparative governance perspective.148 By conceptualising gender analysis tools, such as GBA/GIA, as globally “travelling instruments,”149 their inherent Western notion of gender equality as governance innovation comes into focus. Their implementation needs to be examined in the context of Western feminism and its prevailing strategies and topics.150 Despite their international dissemination, I have decided to explore the implementation of these instruments exclusively in Western151, post-industrialised, democratic contexts, for reasons of comparability.152 Regardless of the different systems of governance (federal-national in Canada vs. multilevel in the EU) and political systems (Westminster vs. supra-national democratic models), the democratic, administrative implementation environment of bureaucracies still renders them comparable. Recent feminist research on the state has confirmed the utility of this methodological approach, since it attests to an “absence of national and regional patterns,” in advancing the state equality project in the Western context, emphasising the importance of the
“sectoral level.”153 2.2.2.3 Comparison
Comparative political science and also sociology have developed a variety of methods in order to enable a systematic comparison,154 one of which is employing the method of qualitative, synchronic comparison based on a typology model.155 In very general terms, the comparative method allows for concentration on contrasts, similarities and deviances through a systematic, close-up interrogation of a limited number of cases.156 Synchronic comparison rests on the assumption that the cases are similar and therefore comparable in location, time and form. The case study choice is “indeed 148 | Tömmel/Verdun 2009a. For the detailed comparative method, see the following chapter 2.2.2.3.
149 | As an example, Canadian GBA travelled to South Africa (Hanson 2008) and visiting groups of South Korean civil servants informed themselves about GBA practise in Canadian federal administration.
150 | For an African critique of Western feminism, emphasising deviating African goals and issues, see i.e. (Haastrup 2014, 106-109).
151 | Researching public policy gender analysis in contexts of the Global South is yet another uncompleted, but promising task, since younger, more malleable democracies and favourable local contexts might make possible advancements in mainstreaming gender equality that are unthinkable in the West; i.e. in Korea, where success (Kim 2008; Korean Women’s Development Institute 2008), but also contestation are nearby (Won 2007).
152 | This is not intended to ignore the strides gender mainstreaming and its instruments seem to have taken in many parts of the world, such as in Africa (Mukabi Kabira/Masinjila 1997; Theobald et al. 2004; Mukhopadhyay 2007; Wendoh/Wallace 2006; Haastrup 2014) or Asia (Kim 2008; Korean Women’s Development Institute 2008; United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia 2011).
153 | McBride/Mazur 2013, 672.
154 | Pickel et al 2009; Lauth et al. 2009; Laut/Winkler 2006.
155 | Knoepfel et al. 2011, 21.For gender analysis tool typology, see chapter 1.6.
156 | Rihoux 2009, 365-366. It is especially useful for the testing of hypotheses and meso theories. Comparative research in this study is employed more at the epistemological level as a form of research strategy than as a set of formal techniques.
very important.”157 In the context of this research, the synchronicity158 of GBA/GIA being post-Beijing instruments of the travelling strategy gender mainstreaming,159 combined with the fact that both Canada and the European Commission have long-term, internationally acknowledged practice with their respective gender policy analysis and policy impact assessment systems, lead me to hypothesise that GBA/
GIA would be suitable case studies for comparison and enable me to describe the status quo for gender mainstreaming in impact assessment.160
In order to gather the broadest data and to allow for flexibility, I chose not only a comparative, but also a procedural analysis, progressing iteratively161: First, the design of the interview questionnaire and then the content analysis were triangulated with document analysis162. The analysis of the Canadian set of interviews on GBA practices built my coding baseline structure for the comparison with the GIA and gender in integrated IA realities in the EU. The modified analytical framework of Components and Facilitating Factors for Gender Analysis163 served as the grid for assessing the governance structures of GBA implementation in Canada. For the purpose of a smoother and more logical interview dialogue, the framework and the semi-guided interview questionnaire were adapted to the European context.164 Only when the content analysis on the EU data set was completed did a final coding structure emerge that enabled me to execute a synchronic comparison.
In sum, in my transnational comparative approach, I considered the content and genealogy of concepts, strategies and tools for achieving gender equality as both idiosyncratic and synchronic in the two multilevel environments—on the level of the Canadian national state and the supra-national level of the EU. These environments are idiosyncratic because of the different implementation of gender equality concerns through either integrated and/or separate tools; however, they are nevertheless comparable because GIA and GBA as we know them today are gender mainstreaming tools, synchronically situated in the post-Beijing process, succeeding from the milestone adoption of the gender mainstreaming strategy in the Declaration and Platform for Action at the 4th United Nation’s (UN) World 157 | Ackerly/True 2013, 150.
158 | Knoepfel et al. 2011, 21.
159 | As elaborated in subsection 1.1.4.
160 | For engagement with the EU impact assessment system and policy learning based on it, see, e.g. (Renda 2006; Meuwese 2008; Radaelli/Meuwese 2008; Tömmel/Verdun 2009a; Radaelli 2009; Hensel et al. 2010b; De Francesco et al. 2012). For the success of (and disappointment with) GBA in gendering public policies, see, e.g. (Burke 2001; Boyd 2003; Hankivsky 2005b; Bakker 2006; Boucher 2007; Boscoe/Tudiver 2007; Abu-Laban 2008; Haussman et al. 2010; Grace 2011).
161 | Benoit Rihoux calls the qualitative comparative method “an iterative and creative process,” “far from being a push-button-type technique” (Rihoux 2009, 368). This study followed a series of steps, breaking up the research process into sequences. It was thus inspired by the philosophy of grounded theory, being lead by the material and the progressing research process (Charmaz, Kathy 2006).
162 | Bowen 2009; Knoepfel et al. 2011. Document analysis of primary (tools) and secondary (academic) publications.
163 | Presented in table 5 in subsection 2.5.3.
164 | The semi-guided interview questionnaire can be consulted in Annex IV.
Conference on Women.165 All of the above makes the examination of the role of gender analysis tools in the EU’s IA system as compared to the Canadian policy analysis practices a worthwhile subject for my comparative inquiry.166 Setting the comparative analysis before the backdrop of multilevel governance recognises the fact that each level of government is a significant policy actor in its own right and at the same time subjected to interwoven effects of the various levels. Applying a multilevel governance perspective to the empirical analysis highlights the fact that both policy advice through IA systems, while similar in many ways, contain different features which affect the nature of the processes followed.